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MIA24.2
"What?!" "Pitney hastily slipped the backpack straps from his arms and set it on the ground. Kneeling next to it, he cautiously opened it up. "The meteorite appeared to have cracked open. "What's it doing?" Pitney asked. "Dunno. Maybe it's an egg of some kind." "As they watched it, the meteorite split into three pieces, and a green tendril like a plant vine snapped out and whipped Pitney on the arm. "Ouch! That stung!" "Get away from it," Drake ordered. Pitney scooted away from it. Drake removed his blaster and irradiated the pod with a high-temperature energy burst. "Well, that's the end of that," Drake muttered. "Let's take a look at your arm." "Pitney held out his arm. The veins in his arm near where the plant had stung him were beginning to turn a greenish-black. "That doesn't look good. Let's get you back to infirmary." "Pitney nodded. He was beginning to feel dizzy. "As Drake put his arm beneath his shoulders, Pitney heard a whispering noise... as if the plants were talking to him...no, it wasn't "as if", they were talking to him, it just seemed as if he couldn't quite understand what they were saying to him…not yet. "Do you hear them," Pitney smiled, as he looked at the plants, "do you hear the plants talking?" "You sure you weren't hit in the head as well as stung?" "You don't believe me?" Pitney caressed at one of the nearby plants, "it's okay if you don't believe me, they're talking to me, though," he touched at one of the plants, and leaned towards it, he stroked at one of the leaves, "keep on talking, I don't fully comprehend what it is that you are saying, but I will! I WILL!" "You can't talk to plants and have them return conversation in kind, not like with people." "When you cut them, do they not bleed? Can they not be stimulated with light, music and water?" "Of course they bleed," Drake was getting exasperated, "ok, not blood like you and I, but sap. And it certainly has been proven that music have had an effect on certain types of plants in some cases…but that still doesn't give them the ability to speak or think. "No…!" Pitney cried out. "The plants have been speaking to people on thousands of worlds for billions of years, and have never been heard, but soon…soon all of that will change." "You're taking a great risk, Adric," Elizabeth warned. "I know," Adric smiled confidently, "and I know it's a long-shot bet… 35:1 I believe, but I know what it is that I am doing." The dealer spun at the wheel, "final bets," the dealer called out. "I still think I'll put all of my money on the zero, I have a good feeling about that," Adric shoved the stacks of tokens onto the one little square. "No more bets," the ball came out the shooter and whizzed around the wheel. Gianna couldn't bear to watch as the ball whizzed around faster than the eye could possibly see. "He's going to lose it all, every last cent!" "No I'm not," Adric smiled almost too confidently, he watched as the small ball began to bounce around on the wheel, first a 1, then a 33, then a 20, each time it bounced out of the slot, finally it sank down in the final slot. "I can't bear to look at where it landed," Elizabeth held her hands up to her face. "It's alright," Adric sounded drunk with giddy as he pointed at the wheel, "look!" Elizabeth slowly pulled her fingers apart, and looked out between them, she gulped. "The ball…it's…" "I know, it's settled on the zero slot." "How do you do it?" Elizabeth asked. "How is it that you have won at every turn?" "You're not cheating are you??" Gianna looked at his hands, possibly for a micro controller hidden in the palm of his hand or something. "I am not a cheat," Adric protested, surprised at the very implication, "it's just that the odds are in my favour it seems." "But you…" Gianna rolled her eyes, "oh, never mind," she stood up from her seat, "I'm going to the powder room to freshen up a bit." "Oh," Elizabeth looked up, "Adric and I were just getting ready to head over to the restaurant anyway, after we cash in." "Which one?" Gianna inquired, as there were several inside the building. "The Endora House Restaurant," "Oh, the all you can eat place." "All you can eat?" Adric looked up with a smile, realizing that he hadn't had a full meal for a couple of days. "Really?" "Really," Gianna smiled, "and you did say you were going to treat us, didn't you?" No he didn't, he first frowned, after all these ladies looked the type to buy up entire planets without blinking, then he realized, it was probably just a courtesy gesture that he was supposed to have to do. "Oh," he suppressed a gulp, "of course." "Good, I'll meet you at the Endore House Restaurant in 10 minutes." At that, Gianna walked away. The cloaked figure didn't bother to hide its presence from the people, he (or she, the way the figure was cloaked, made it impossible to tell) realized it would be fruitless, and in actuality, would draw more attention to its presence than not hiding at all. The figure watched Lady Elizabeth and Adric's movements very closely, as they made their way over to the cashier's booth. The face of the figure slips out of from under the hood, and a grotesque skeletal mask can be seen. The Doctor had no idea what it was that he was looking for…or why, but he knew that if he looked hard enough, he would stumble across something exciting for him to look into. The room in which he had entered was a sort of a storage area, some of it were lost & found items, all of which were the usual items that people would misplace, wallets, keys, the occasional trinket or something of interest only to the person to whom the item belonged. But it was what was on the other side of the room that was of interest, and in fact looked quite out of place for inside a casino. Alien artefacts were neatly labelled and placed on shelves, as well as meteorites that fell from the sky. Most of them were ordinary in nature, but there were a few probes that were designed to look un-cannily like meteorites, most of those were rigged with spy-cams that had long ago been deactivated. As he continued to poke around, his eyes looked into a back office, there were two young fellows there discussing the possibilities of intelligence in plant life. If he were anybody else, he would have thought it to be rather absurd, but he had seen lots of things like this before, where plant life had in fact taken on a life of its own as a result of outside influence or some such nonsense. One of them appeared to have been stung. "Hey, that looks rather bad!" The Doctor saw the need to see if he could treat the sting mark before it got infected (or worse) more important than disguising his presence. "Who are you?" Drake ordered. "You're not supposed to be back here." "Oh, you know, I just got turned around out there, and I thought that this was the coat room," He held out his coat as if actually believed that they were there to take his coat, "but this isn't the coat room, is it? Oh well." He said with a shrug, and then took a hold of Pitney's arm, "but let's not worry about that right now, it's this arm that concerns me!" "It'll be okay, just got stung by a streamer," Pitney pulled his hand back. "That came out of that rock?" The Doctor pointed to the rock that was broken open. "Yes." "Where is it now?" "The streamer?" Drake asked. "Yes." "It's…" Drake looked around, "actually, I don't know." "Oh, it doesn't matter. Just wish I knew what kind of a plant came from that rock," then his hand shot to his mouth, I certainly hope it's not what I think it is! Quite some time ago, he and Sarah Jane had encountered a meteorite that had been preserved in ice for several thousand years on Earth's Artic Circle, and quite similarly, someone had been stung. The poor fellow's body had mutated to something quite monstrous. "Look, I think you better go." "Nonsense," the Doctor frowned, "we need to get that arm looked at, try to get him an antidote before it is too late." "NO!" Pitney cried out. "No antidote!" "I have seen this happen before," the Doctor sounded quite animate, "it will quantumly take over your body until there is no resemblance of a human being left, then it will grow upon itself." "Sir…" Drake gulped. "Doctor," "Who?" "Me," the Doctor pointed to himself, "I am called the Doctor." "Doctor…who?" Drake asked rather frustrated. "No, just calling me Doctor`ll do fine," "Okay Doctor," Drake frowned, "besides the fact that you're scaring me, what do we do?" "If we are to save your friend I suggest that we start working on an antidote and fast. Either that, or amputate the arm to cut the flow of the poison to his system." "NO!" Pitney's hand reached out at the Doctor, he couldn't quite reach, but he found as he stretched his arm out, it expanded and grew, for the flesh that was once there was replaced by the bark-like shell found on most trees. "No amputation, no antidote." His branch- like fingers extended outwards, then wrapped their way around the Doctor's neck, and began to choke the Doctor. "The plants have chosen me as their Ambassador; they have more pods out there prepared for the moment of dissension, and you need to ask yourself…will they chose you to be an ambassador, to seed the planets of human-plan hybrids or will they destroy you like so much fodder?" "Why don't we head on upstairs?" Elizabeth had suggested to Adric, as they finally left the restaurant. "Are you sure? I mean Gianna or the Doctor could start looking for either one of us down here." They had actually utilized the time they had alone together quite productively, they were starting to get quite familiar with each other, and Elizabeth even talked him into having a few drinks, but in all of the festivities, Adric had began to worry just a tiny bit about Gianna, but not as much as he had expected to, either. "Oh posh!" Elizabeth smiled. "They'll both figure out what happened." "True," Adric found himself being drawn into Elizabeth, the conversation, the ambiance, and the smell of her perfume had all helped to pull him in to her. "Now, let's head upstairs, shall we?" "Ok," Adric agreed, "are you always this trusting?" "Only to those who I like." "Oh," he smiled. Kiss her, he thought, as he found that their lips were in fact being drawn closer to each other's. Finally his lips had made contact with hers, when he felt the presence of another. "OH!" she responded with pleasant surprise. *Here I was beginning to think that he really was a mamma's boy or something.* "Lady Elizabeth Axori…" the cloaked figure's voice rang out in an icy cold form. "Y-yes?" she pulled away from her kiss with Adric. "For crimes against the people and the state of the Cyrenirian Empire," the cloaked figure reached for its sabre handle and pressed a small switch, a thin beam of light extended out from the handle, and stopped at a pre-disclosed point, "you have been condemned to death!" "But…I never even heard of the Cyrenirian empire!" "You lie!" The sabre was raised into the air, and then quickly swooped through it, as if the assassin was testing out the weight of the sabre for the first time. She looked up to see the sabre coming at her, "No-o-o!" In about 1.03 seconds, the sabre will have passed through her neck like a knife through melted butter. }}